Paper No.2, Research eLert, April 2005
Department of Education and Training
RESEARCH INTO LEARNING: IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING
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Paper No.2, Research eLert, April 2005
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This paper is a summary of the key findings of two reports recently commissioned by the Office of
Learning and Teaching. The Faculty of Education at Monash and the Australian Youth Research
Centre in the Faculty of Education at Melbourne University scanned the literature on teaching and learning to identify the major trends relating to research, theory and practice. This is a snapshot of their research findings.
The paper is organised into two sections. The first section looks at the major trends in pedagogical thinking; life-long learning, changes in theories of learning, deep understanding and concept formation. The second section identifies various teaching and learning practices that reflect these new ways of thinking; collaborative learning, learning communities, rich tasks, assessment practices and
ICT.
Lifelong learning … is concerned with promoting skills and competences necessary for developing general capabilities and specific performance in work situations. Skills and competences developed through programs of lifelong learning are vital for workers performance in their tackling of precise job responsibilities and how well they can adapt their general and particular knowledge and competences to new tasks. (Aspin & Chapman 2001:1)
Finding ways to encourage lifelong learning, through workplaces and beyond formal learning contexts, is a growing concern of all nations, including Australia (International Labour Organisation
2000). Lifelong learning formally begins in the pre-school years. Students’ formative years are of crucial importance in learning how to learn, stimulating the motivation to engage in further learning and building the skills for effective lifelong learning. Thus, pre-primary and primary education are
‘core elements of the concept’ (Schuetze & Slowey 2000:11). Schools can provide rich and frequent opportunities for students to make real decisions that affect their own lives and learning processes, in order to develop one of the key skills of lifelong learners: making good judgements (Beckett & Hager
2000).
Students of today face a future that will be very different, in unimagined ways, from the present. They will need to be flexible and cope easily with diversity and ambiguity. They may be asked to function in both local and global communities, arriving at … decisions after due consideration of evidence and possibilities. They will be expected to work in innovative ways as members of professional learning teams, actively researching their practice and contributing to the growth of these teams … The problems that they will encounter … in other learning contexts, will require cross-disciplinary thinking and complex problem-defining and resolving skills.
(Hildebrand et al. 2001:1)
As adult learners, our future learning citizens will therefore have their creativity and resourcefulness stretched, and they will regularly face ethical and moral dilemmas that will necessitate the taking of an informed position (Duch et al. 2001). This will require them to feel able to function as confident
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Paper No.2, Research eLert, April 2005 and capable learners who are able to think critically, creatively and reflectively. According to
Ritchhart (2001) these three aspects of thinking together encompass much of what is advocated as productive and worthwhile habits of mind, such as scepticism and being strategic (strands of critical thinking); being metacognitive, that is aware of your own way of thinking, and a seeker of truth
(components of reflective thinking); and being open-minded, remaining ever-curious and asking
‘what if … ?’ questions (core strands of creative thinking).
In short, learning how to learn has become a priority in education. However, conceiving of ‘learning how to learn’ as largely a matter of processes can underplay critical questions about knowledge content and relationships between knowledge areas. So too can debate about institutional arrangements, important though they may be. As James and Beckett point out in the case of Australia:
In the years following the Candy and Karpin reports the concept of lifelong learning centred less on curriculum and more on structural issues. Attention shifted – arguably narrowed – to the institutional arrangements that encourage and allow entry and re-entry to formal learning at various stages in life and career. (2000:180)
Lifelong learning has to take account not only of the multiple settings in which learning occurs but also the ways in which these settings influence or determine the forms of knowledge. School curricula must thus take on the challenge of developing young people’s confidence and skills to enable them to become effective lifelong learners (Field 2000). Such a re-thinking of school curricula might involve what the English curriculum theorist Michael Young calls ‘new forms of knowledge relationships’
(1998:6) that are developing between disciplines and subjects, between subject and non-subject knowledge, between theoretical understanding and practical application, and between school and nonschool learning.
Since the late 20 th century there has been a shift in theoretical understandings of how people learn.
Previously the emphasis had been on understanding and planning for children’s chronological developmental needs. Today there is an emphasis on understanding how development is defined by children’s sociocultural experiences (Lubeck et al. 2001; Fleer 2003a; 2003b). This trend is identifiable across a range of curricula from early childhood to adult learning, including the updated version of the American based Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) (Bredekamp & Copple
1997), the emerging work in Reggio Emilia (New 1998) and in the New Zealand curriculum document, Te Whariki (Nuttall 2003).
Whilst the American DAP curriculum makes reference to socio-cultural dimensions of learning and development, theoretical critique of this approach argues that the curriculum itself is essentially developmental in its orientation, with the sociocultural component ‘added’ or assimilated to the existing developmental basis (Mallory & New 1994; Fleer 1995; Lubeck 1998; Edwards 2003a).
However, other curriculum approaches, such as those emerging from the project work in Reggio
Emilia, Italy, seek to recognize the social nature of learning. This increasingly influential approach positions children as powerful learners and argues that education should occur within a democratic context where children are able to participate in decision-making about their educational experiences
(Edwards et al. 1998). Documenting children’s learning serves to recognize the social nature of
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Paper No.2, Research eLert, April 2005 learning by providing children with opportunities to revisit or ‘re-launch’ their learning via discussion with their caregivers, educators and parents (Dahlberg et al. 2000).
The development of the Te Whariki curriculum in New Zealand is another striking example of international innovation where the cultural nature of development is reflected within a bi-cultural approach to curriculum; one that aims to value both the Maori and Pakeha experiences, beliefs and expectations with respect to children’s development (Ritchie 2003).
Evidence of the shift from developmental curricula such as DAP to a sociocultural model of learning in Australia is most clearly seen in discussions regarding the need to consider early childhood education within a cultural context (Wise & Sanson 2000). These developments find practical expression in the Queensland and Western Australian early childhood curriculum guidelines. Recently
New South Wales has also released a set of curriculum guidelines for early childhood education where the sociocultural rather than developmental perspective is emphasized.
Sociocultural theory has therefore been an important catalyst for re-thinking curriculum and pedagogy. These developments are in line with a general worldwide trend in education:
There is a growing interest in what has become known as ‘sociocultural theory’ and its near relative ‘activity theory’. Both traditions are historically linked to the work of L.S. Vygotsky and both attempt to provide an account of learning and development as mediated processes.
(Daniels 2001:1)
Sociocultural theory provides researchers and practitioners with ‘methodological tools for investigating the processes by which social, cultural and historical factors shape human functioning’
(Daniels 2001).
Vygotsky’s legacy as a sociocultural scholar has resulted in a burgeoning body of theoretical writing and new opportunities for pedagogical research in education. As his interpreter suggests:
These developments in social theory are creating new and important possibilities for practices of teaching and learning in schools and beyond. They provide us with theoretical constructs, insights and understandings which we can use to develop our own thinking about the practices of education. (Daniels 2001:2)
In Mind and Society Vygotsky wrote that, ‘just as a mould gives shape to a substance, words can shape an activity into a structure’ (1978:28). The traditional developmental approach to education has moulded and shaped the resultant approach to observation, planning and curriculum. Sociocultural theory has likewise produced new curricula and ways of thinking about education, which differ from the dominant discourse and world view. The findings of Fleer and Robbins (2003a; 2003b; 2004) and
Edwards (2003b) from Australia are consistent with research using sociocultural theory undertaken in other English speaking countries including the UK (Edwards 1999; 2000; 2001; 2002a; 2002b;
Anning 2004; Siraj-Blatchford 2004; Wood 2004), New Zealand (Cullen 2004; Nuttall 2004) and the
US (Lubeck 1996; 1998).
Whilst the dominant discourses surrounding the domains of learning (such as DAP) have been enshrined in quality assurance processes (Fleer & Kennedy 2000), scope exists for teachers and researchers to consider new theoretical perspectives and pedagogical practices derived largely from
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Paper No.2, Research eLert, April 2005 sociocultural theory. These emphasise the need to acknowledge children in their present lives as active members of different communities who develop their knowledge of the world within the context of their social and cultural relationships.
Surface knowledge and learning has been characterised by Meyer (2000) as unreflective studying of a fragmented curriculum, unthinking acceptance of texts or other authorities and memorizing without understanding. Deep knowledge and learning, by definition, seeks to reverse these practices. It requires time to study in depth a limited number of topics and subjects. It demands an enquiring and analytical approach to information and interpretations, and it requires subject expertise on the part of teachers.
The most significant development in 21 st century pedagogy is likely to be the shift toward curricula, teaching and assessment that favour deeper theoretical knowledge and learning. As Weigal argues:
We may well be in the initial stages of a revolution in learning that combines richness with accessibility and in so doing parts company with the dominant educational motif of surface learning. (2003:xiv)
Nonetheless, surface learning continues to prevail in many subject fields. Despite the advances that had already been made towards deep learning in mathematics, the American researcher John Bruer suggested in the early 1990s that:
Many students don’t know why the math procedures they learn in school work … Too often, math instruction produces students who can manipulate number symbols but who don’t understand what the symbols mean. (1993:81)
The American writer Jean Schmittau, in a critique of basing mathematics on the activity of counting, argues that spontaneous and empirical concepts need to be replaced by the more scientific concept of measurement, ‘not only to enable students to grasp mathematics at a deep conceptual level, but to develop their ability to think theoretically’ (2003:232).
Research in the field of science education has found that although older students can use more science terms than younger students, they may decline in their understanding of fundamental concepts.
Building on these critiques, Graesser et al. note that ‘what is missing are the deep, coherent explanations that organize the shallow knowledge and fortify learners for generating inferences, reasoning, and applying their knowledge to practical situations’ (2002:33).
There is mounting evidence about the positive impact of deep learning strategies and methods on student performance. Longitudinal research conducted by Newmann et al. (2001) has involved large cohorts of students from nineteen different schools in disadvantaged areas in Chicago USA. The findings showed that assignments offering authentic intellectual challenges to students contributed markedly to students’ performance in basic skills tests. Low expectations of students and concentration on ‘basics’ at the cost of student intellectual development were detrimental to students’ success.
Deep thinking and learning also have a social and emotional dimension. That is:
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Emotions function cognitively only when they embed beliefs. For example, an emotion such as ‘fear’ cannot be genuine if one does not believe in danger.
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An emotion provides a frame of reference. For example, parental love is a framework within which one organizes a set of feelings, attitudes and actions.
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Emotions can help or distract our focus.
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Emotions can make things stand out by heightening our awareness and redirecting our attention. (Elgin cited in Lipman 2003:129)
The ability to recognise emotional responses in oneself and others can also lead to self-control both socially and educationally. This is also the central message in the literature which focuses on social and emotional learning referred to in the literature as SEL, a term adopted in USA through the network CASEL (the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning).
Related to questions of surface and deep learning is the fact that learners already have their own ideas and concepts that they bring to bear on new learning. Everyday or spontaneous ideas and concepts are acquired through a learner’s own reflections on everyday life. The American theorist Howard Gardner notes the pedagogical problem of the ‘the power of early theories’; that is, those theories by which children and young people spontaneously develop intuitive theories of matter, life, mind, and human relations (2004:54-55). Such theories, he observes, may have ‘a surface plausibility to them’, being based on the evidence of the senses and appearing to be validated from time to time (56). They may also contain many profound insights and truths. However, even if erroneous, such theories are
‘difficult to change, and early theories prove especially difficult to alter’ (57). Depending on a learner’s background and beliefs, the meeting of scientific concepts with everyday and spontaneous theories may extend from early childhood well into adult life.
In terms of content acquisition (particularly that associated with literacy and numeracy), children’s capacity to learn the landscape of schooling is further complicated by the need to learn the language and frame of reference of each discipline area (Greeno 1991). Sociocultural studies within school contexts have demonstrated that subject domains also have their own language:
Technicality and abstraction are tools which (are used) to explore the subject areas of the curriculum. The student therefore has to learn to marshal the language of technicality and abstraction in ways appropriate to each discipline … Knowledge of specialised registers is a powerful means of access in society and therefore needs to be taught as this gives the student conscious control, at least to some degree, of these technologies. (Foley cited in Daniels
2001:159-60)
The assertion that children’s access to educational genres is conditioned by their sociocultural experiences is strengthened further by Vygotsky’s premise that whilst scientific or discipline knowledge and everyday thinking are different, reciprocity between them is essential for learning to occur. Vygotsky argued that everyday or embedded contexts are important pathways toward understanding dis-embedded or ‘scientific thought’.
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This perspective leads to the suggestion offered by Daniels (1996), that teachers should move beyond a simple focus on studying concepts in isolation to examining children’s conceptual understandings within an embedded and richly based context. For example, examining how literacy and numeracy are fostered and developed within homes and communities as well as in schools and centres, can lead to insights not only into children’s learning, but also into differences between ways in which literacy and numeracy may develop in the various context of a learner’s life. In this way it is possible to see how everyday and scientific thinking in literacy and numeracy are introduced, framed and supported – whether intentionally or not.
Closer school links to the students’ communities and the knowledge that these communities hold is thus the most important resource for reorganising instruction in ways that ‘far exceed’ the limits of current schooling … These social connections help teachers and students to develop their awareness of how they can use the everyday to understand classroom content and use classroom activities to understand social reality. (Moll & Greenberg 1990:345-46)
An exchange of cultural knowledge between schools and families would therefore contribute valuably to children’s learning experiences. For example, Rogoff (2003) found that children growing up in low socio-economic circumstances continue to be disadvantaged in schools, since the cultural capital they have acquired prior to formal schooling is not well understood by the education community.
Assumptions held by teachers working with children from low socio-economic circumstances regarding their pre-school experiences brand children as deficient in literacy and numeracy. This finding is consistent with other studies that have examined the schooling experience of low socioeconomic communities (Hill et al. 1998).
The following section outlines some strategies that support sociocultural theories of pedagogy, including concepts of deep knowledge and lifelong learning.
Collaborative learning has been practised in schools for many decades. There is much professional expertise and experience in developing strategies for collaborative learning. There is a robust research tradition addressing a myriad of issues to do with collaborative learning, from the pioneering work of
Vygotsky and early researchers to studies investigating the links between new pedagogy and information technology. However, there are limitations in the research: only a few studies suggest that working in a small team achieves cognitive outcomes that cannot be matched or exceeded by the most
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Paper No.2, Research eLert, April 2005 capable group member (Schwartz 2001:197). Nonetheless, collaborative learning has been shown to be a more effective way of learning than individualized or competitive learning (Slavin 1983; Johnson
& Johnson 1987). The American researchers Johnson and Johnson concluded that:
If student-student interdependence is structured carefully and appropriately, students will achieve at a higher level, more frequently use higher level reasoning strategies, have higher levels of academic motivation, be more intrinsically motivated, develop more positive interpersonal relationships with each other, value more the subject area being studied, have higher self-esteem, and be skilled interpersonally. (1987:9)
Johnson et al. (2000) have recently suggested that there is no other pedagogical practice that simultaneously generates such diverse positive outcomes as collaborative learning.
A key challenge for educators in realising Vygotsky’s social learning theory is to conceptualise the domains of learning as parts of a whole – to recognise that knowledge and values arise within specific educative communities, and the larger communities to which they belong. Neither knowledge nor social relationships develop in isolation. Knowledge and values are acquired and theorised within an individual’s particular community: namely family, neighbours, friends, and colleagues, who participate to varying degrees in communities of interest and in local, ethnic, regional and national communities.
The American theorist T.J. Sergiovanni suggests that shared conceptions about curriculum are essential to developing a community of mind among teachers and between them and others (1994).
Acknowledging that there are many different types of learning communities Gabelnick et al. (1990) suggest that learning communities are principally new kinds of more collaborative curricular structures within institutions that link different disciplines and subject areas around common themes or questions. They argue that learning communities purposely restructure the curriculum to link together course or course work so that students find greater coherence in what they are learning as well as increased intellectual interaction with faculty and fellow students. (Gabelnick et al. 1990:5)
Consistent with this definition, Gabelnick et al. maintain that these communities are usually associated with collaborative and active approaches to learning, some form of team teaching, and interdisciplinary themes. They add that, by promoting the integration of knowledge, learning communities counteract the isolating tendencies of education and the curricular ‘dis-integration’ that results when knowledge is compartmentalized into competing disciplines and isolated courses. Thus, learning communities offer an alternative to an educational environment where loyalty to one’s discipline separates, excludes, and isolates.
The English curriculum theorist, Michael Young, imagines a curriculum of the future that overcomes divisions between academic and vocational knowledge and breaks the insularity of the old academic subject divisions. This curriculum arises from ‘deeper changes in the form of specialization not just as it appears in the curriculum but in the wider division of labour and occupational structure of society’
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(1998:70). Young does not propose a move away from specialization but rather more integrative or connective forms of specialization. In curricular terms, Young suggests that:
The change is not away from specialization but towards new forms that can (at least in principle) free specialization from its association with selection and insulation. The separation of specialization from its association with divisions and the insulation of subject areas is the key basis for distinguishing between a divided curriculum or ‘curriculum of the past’ and a
‘curriculum of the future’.
(1998:74, emphasis in the original)
Such a curriculum, Young notes, would need to build on and specify the principles of breadth and flexibility, connections between both core and specialist studies and general (academic) and applied
(vocational) studies, opportunities for progression and credit transfer, and a clear sense of the purpose of the curriculum as a whole (1998:79).
In the GoodWork Project , Howard Gardner and others at the Harvard Graduate School of Education are seeking to establish ‘parameters for a pedagogy of interdisciplinarity’, including the development of strategies that teachers and students can use to ‘integrate knowledge from two or more disciplines to create products, solve problems, or produce explanations’ (2003:1). In this context, the notion of
‘rich tasks’, as proposed by a research and development team at Education Queensland, is an interesting development (2000). It is also consistent with other research such as inquiries into
‘authentic achievement’ (Newmann 1996) and ‘authentic intellectual work’ (Newmann et al. 2001).
Rich tasks draw on knowledge, skills and practices across disciplines, and for this reason are said to be ‘transdisciplinary’. To some extent they lend substance to the controversial assertion of the British theorists Gibbons et al. (1994) that disciplines are losing their significance. Unfortunately, discourse about this concept tends to be ill-defined and in much-disputed terms: cross-disciplinary, interdisciplinary, trans-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary, not to mention the term ‘discipline’ itself, which has an uncertain status in the design of school curricula.
Nonetheless, even if not always stated explicitly in some of the literature, rich tasks question old assumptions about ‘depth.’ Commonly ‘depth’ is equated with disciplinary knowledge, whereas a new kind of depth is emerging. Acknowledging that ‘much interdisciplinary work runs the risk of lack of depth rather than learning about fields and sub-fields of knowledge’, the Queensland New Basics
Project insists that rich tasks must stress ‘the need for depth of knowledge in both traditional and nontraditional operational fields and disciplines’ (Education Queensland 2000:93).
Critical to any initiative in teaching and learning are the accompanying assessment practices:
‘assessment is frequently the engine that drives pedagogy and the curriculum’ (Hildebrand 1996:149).
It shapes learners’ motivation, their sense of priorities and their learning tactics. Assessment practices should not be tacked on as addenda, but integrated into the teaching-learning-curriculum design process.
Stiggins (2001) presents a case for students to be actively involved in their own assessment in order to enhance their learning. Newmann (1996) goes further when he defines authentic achievement as that which involves significant and meaningful work that produces new knowledge, not merely reproducing received wisdom. He argues that where students have opportunities to engage in real
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Paper No.2, Research eLert, April 2005 work, relevant to their lives, teachers will be ‘more likely to motivate and sustain students in the hard work that learning requires’ (Newmann 1996:27). Arter and McTighe also suggest that teachers should learn how to develop and use more explicit performance and scoring criteria which can be
powerful instructional tools for improving the very achievement that is also being assessed …
The idea is simple – teach students the criteria for quality and how to apply them to their own work to make it better. (Arter & McTighe 2001:82)
For these reasons, there is currently world-wide interest in shifting away from conventional assessment practices that have led to superficial learning and low levels of engagement with learning.
The English writer P.J. Black argues that schools must move from assessment of learning to assessment for and as learning (Black et al. 2003; Earl 2003). Black (1998) argues that one of the most important steps teachers can take to improve student outcomes is to undertake more formative assessment. A focus on summative assessment can be counter-productive if our aim is to enhance deep learning and the development of lifelong learning skills such as metacognition.
Today, presenting and understanding one’s own learning is an essential component of lifelong learning and involves a level of self-assessment that can be practised in schools (Wilson & Wing Jan
1998). Both formative and summative classroom assessment should therefore play an important part in any changes to curriculum reform or to the introduction of new learning theories to classroom teaching (Shepard 2001).
There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that particular applications of ICTs in educational contexts can advantage learners and facilitate teaching. Considerable discussion about new pedagogies seeks to identify some wholesale changes in the ways that educators ought to frame their work, and while such a theoretical summary would be useful, it is clear that the advantages to students using ICTs can be seen in specific situations. Overall, studies have shown that:
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Higher order thinking skills improve with home and school access to computers;
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Student collaboration through software applications can improve problem solving, and the quality of discussions;
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ICTs provide different and effective opportunities for communication, and developing communication skills;
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ICTs used within the process of knowledge construction, programming, and reflection provide particular reasoning and problem solving challenges that are relevant and effective.
From the point of view of curriculum, there are two principal issues: learning about ICTs, and learning with ICTs. The first of these includes learner understandings of the ways that ICTs impact society, and how values and power are implied and communicated through technology. This is a departure from the view that technical skill and knowledge of the working of machines is the extent of this domain.
The second issue locates ICTs within the pedagogies of other fields. To some extent there are generic aspects which include communication, project management, publishing, managing digital artefacts and problem solving with ICTs. There are also implications for specific ICTs in some curriculum areas that include simulation, demonstration, and programming. An opening up of the curriculum to
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Paper No.2, Research eLert, April 2005 support cross-age and cross-discipline learning activities provides good opportunities to explore these issues, and so, approaches to this style of work needs research and extensive documentation.
Teacher professional development about and through ICTs is a complex area where significant research has been conducted. It is worth noting that those professional development initiatives which feature embedded processes for reflection, action research, and professional community offer fine models for research with tangible and rewarding outcomes.
The demands of a knowledge economy have prompted a renewed focus on learning and teaching. As a result there are alternative pedagogical models which challenge learning and teaching as institutionalized in schools. These models stress the importance of the socially situated nature of learning; positioning learners as collaborating in the creation of new knowledge and the development of new skills. By sharing experiences and constructing knowledge with others, learners are developing significant forms of social and academic competence. A focus on the social nature of learning is integral to a vision of a democratic society and an actively engaged citizenry. Across all learning sectors, research is emphasising the importance of developing new approaches that involve deep theoretical knowledge and understanding and the cognitive and affective aspects of teaching and learning.
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